Any time something like that happens to your arm or you start losing feeling and stuff … you think about it for sure. I don’t really want to think like that right now. I want to think about figuring out a way to deal with this.

Most of the time I cringe when I hear about sports injuries, but not the case with Hanley Ramirez. He was held out of the lineup on July 21, 2012 due to … wait for it … an infection in his hand. What made this funny?

It’s pretty infected. I was kind of worried about it. Hopefully the infection comes out pretty soon. I don’t think he was taking his pills then all of a sudden it (swelled) up. I don’t think it’s a big deal but we have got to prevent (it from becoming) a big deal. (It) was pretty ugly and pretty sensitive. Hopefully the doctor will find exactly what he needs and make sure baby Hanley takes (it). I will every night ‘open your mouth’ and put it in his mouth. How do you forget to take a pill that the doctors (tells) to take?

Jose Bautista is back in the lineup for the Toronto Blue Jays because there was no structural damage in his wrist. He said:

It’s all about pain tolerance since there’s no structural damage. As long as you can tolerate the pain, I’m not going to make it any worse unless I do too much, too soon. I’ll let pain dictate what I can do, and hopefully two weeks is enough. I’m thinking it will be.

This got me thinking … I am unsure what structural damage is in an injury.

What is structural damage in a sports injury

The first thing I learned is that structural damage refers to the joints of the body. Most likely:

Dustin Pedroia is back in the Red Sox lineup after suffering his second thumb injury of the season. This got me thinking about what you can do to avoid chronic thumb injuries.

What are chronic thumb injuries

Chronic injuries of any kind are ones that happen over and over or are conditions that never seem to resolve. This is an important part of understanding how quickly you can come back from an injury.

In terms of the thumb, a chronic injury can manifest itself in three primary ways:

Inflammation

Loss of strength

Pain

Regardless of the injury, broken, strained, torn, if you continue to have the above symptoms you might suffer from a chronic thumb injury. Only a doctor can help you determine if you have a chronic injury, but it is good to know the following before you go to see them: